Friday, 17 December 2010

Pasta e fagioli – Pasta and beans

Meat-free winter comfort food, as many versions as there are comuni in Italy. Here it is Bolognese style, in other words, with quite a lot of parmesan and more than a hint of balsamic. The beans I used were gigantic runner beans, harvested when the pods had yellowed and stiffened in October, but you could use borlotti beans just as well, or even chick peas. Equally, you can use almost any kind of pasta - I used some home made pappardelle. The quantity of garlic may seem excessive but slow cooking mellows it. In the photo, I served the dish with a dollop of pesto on top but that is optional.

You can watch a different version being prepared, espresso at http://fooyoh.com/nowwatch/watch/EzOxrjiYL3s

Ingredients

200g dried beans

4 bay leaves

1 head of garlic

1 onion

3 sticks of celery

2 carrots

4tbls olive oil

1 can chopped tomatoes

2tbls good balsamic vinegar

50g parsley

200g pasta

75g parmesan

Method

1. Soak the beans overnight. The next day bring them to the boil in fresh water with bay leaves and garlic, then place them in a slow oven for several hours to soften. Then strain and keep warm, discarding the bay leaves. Squeeze the garlic out of its skin and add to the beans.

2. Meanwhile, finely chop the vegetables – onion, celery and carrot – and gently fry in olive oil with the lid on until they soften and begin to brown. Now add the chopped tomatoes and balsamic vinegar and half a cup of water, bring to the boil and simmer for an hour until the ingredients have amalgamated to form a sauce. Add the beans and the finely chopped parsley.

3. Cook the pasta until just al dente, drain and add to the sauce and the beans. Stir in the parmesan.

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Bologna and Bolognese food - raising the profile

Taste for Bologna has been named blog of the month by BBC food magazine, Olive. They say it's a 'useful source of top local knowledge for anyone travelling to the Bologna region...Lovely recipes too'.

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Taste Italia has just published our quick guide to eating, drinking, shopping and sleeping in Bologna. And we regularly feature in the new on-line food and drink magazine, The Foodie Bugle.

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Spaghetti bolognese? Or is it tagliatelle al ragu?

This blog is a foodie tour of Bologna with recipes gleaned from my favourite restaurants and home cooks. For serious fans of Italian food and cookery, the city has two great attractions. It has Italy's best regional cuisine - in the view of most Italians (in their more dispassionate moments) - and it has the most enthusastic eating culture. It also has a glorious cityscape, with miles of orange-red coloured porticos and an unspoilt historic centre, a perfect backdrop to good food. People outside Italy vaguely recognise the appeal of Bologna - they relish spag bol, lasagne, parmesan and balsamic - but it rarely figures in their travel plans.

As Elizabeth David wrote in Italian Food, ' Everyone has heard of the mortadella sausage of Bologna, but how many hurrying motorists drive past the rose and ochre coloured arcades of Bologna quite unaware that behind modest doorways are some of the best restaurants in Italy'.

Fine, nobody wants Bologna to be swamped with tourists like Florence and Rome, pushing up prices and diluting quality.

Now, if you don't want to or can't go to Bologna, you can enjoy cucina bolognese at home with my blog - almost, for what you'll miss is the buzz of a city where they live to eat.

About Me

Marcello, my room mate in Liverpool, introduced me to Bologna, his home town. When he went back to Italy he set up a restaurant with three partners. Through him I learnt about Bologna and the place that food and eating plays in the life of the people. And, having eaten so well in his restaurant - La Locanda del Castello at Sasso Marconi, http://www.locandacastello.it/ - I decided that it would be good to share the experience with a wider audience of visitors for whom Italy means Tuscany or Rome or Sicily but rarely Bologna. My partner, Liz Cousins, agreed and proposed writing a book together, illustrated with her photos. So that's what we are doing, and this site gives you a taste of the book as it develops over the next year or so. So if Italian food and cooking is your thing, stay in touch. You will be the first to hear about pre-publication deals.